⚽️ Jock jams?👂obsessed (w/obsession) 🌱vines 🤷♀️ let them 🎵 lost media 🔍
🍭 👂this machine is broken 🌈 🤸♀️
Bonjour.
Today is Monday, April 28, 2025. In case this newsletter is too long, I found the podcast lover’s podcast episode here, I’m obsessed with a new series here, someone emailed me with an urgent FYI about this.
xoxo
lauren
🚨If u only have time for 1 thing🚨
Yowei Shaw is back with an episode of Proxy that is the best episode of anything I’ve heard in a long time. Give it an award. It starts with a letter Yowei received from a guy whose wife just left him for a woman. (We are calling him two fake names, “George” and “Bi-Sexual Wife Guy.”) It’s not just a letter it’s a sweet letter. Not a “poor me” letter. George is completely emotionally confused but he wants the best for her. So much so that I’m not even sure he’s thinking enough about his own feelings or letting himself be angry. It seems he is reevaluating his existence. He feels like a minor character that just got booted out of his own life. Proxy, in case you don’t know, is this nuanced investigative journalism project, where Yowei allows people to have conversations and be introduced to thoughts with a proxy. In this case, she wants to facilitate a conversation between Bi Sexual Wife Guy with a different woman who left her husband for a woman. Who better than someone you know, her ex-colleague at Invisibilia Hanna Rosin? This conversation is pure gold. Hanna is so honest. (You know how I said George feels like a minor character in his own life that just got booted out of the show? Hanna is like, “you kind of are and that sucks.”) Bi Sexual Wife Guy gets the therapy session of a lifetime. This conversation is bursting with beauty and clarity and urgency, it feels like it needed to happen so badly for George. But Hanna needed it too. There wasn’t a word of this episode that I wasn’t hanging on to, including the dazzling commentary from Yowei who is the thread connecting all of this for us.
notes
✨You know how much I loved Zach Mack's Alternate Reality series on NPR (or the This American Life version.) Zach thinks his dad has gone all in on conspiracy theories, while his father thinks that Zach is one the being brainwashed. So, they come up with a bet to try to settle things once and for all. Narrative storytelling is hard enough to pull off, but reporting on your own family? Join him with Radio Bootcamp for this Q & A on Tuesday (TOMORROW) to ask Zach: how'd you do it?
✨The Podcast Show London is coming up, and I’m speaking with Arielle Nissenblatt and Shreya Sharma. I am obsessed with The Podcast Show—it’s beautiful, and there’s a great week-long festival lineup of live podcasts from in venues across London. Learn more about it here. ADE SHERLING is the winner of the Platinum Pass giveaway so while sorry if you didn’t win you can get 10% off Platinum and Gold Passes if you use code TINK10.
✨On THURSDAY, I’m hosting a presentation on promo swaps for IndiePod. Join me!
✨Arielle spotlighted Nonprofits Now: Leading Today in EarBuds.
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👋q & a & q & a & q & a👋
Yowei Shaw
Yowei Shaw is a podcast host, producer and emotional investigative journalist.™️ She spent many years making the NPR podcast Invisibilia and is now making an indie podcast called Proxy.
How would you describe Proxy in 10 words or less?
Niche emotional conundrums, investigated by proxy
Tell us Proxy’s origin story.
I was working on a story about layoffs after getting laid off from NPR in 2023. . And then I got laid off from my story about layoffs. And then I was like, you know what? Let’s do this.And I launched Proxy with a 3-part series about the emotional and mental toll of layoffs.
But the idea for Proxy was planted much earlier when I discovered the magic of “reporting on your feelings.” Turns out when you talk to experts and sources who have experience with your conundrum, you feel less alone. You get less stuck. I wanted to give that experience to other people.
How is Proxy now different than you thought it’d be when it first came into your mind?
The original deck included ritual. Lots of ritual. People were confused, so I took it out.
I love your nutty ideas. Tell me more about this ritual stuff!
As I was developing the show, I was reading about ritual and discovered that researchers think of ritual as one of humanity’s most efficient tools for generating the emotions you need. It struck me that proxy conversations were a kind of ritual, and I had this idea that Proxy would sometimes feature the stories of rituals people had invented to help them get through something. Anyway, glad I nixed the idea.
What is an emotional-investigative journalist?
It started as a bit. Then people latched onto the phrase - I think because there’s something funny about pairing “investigative journalist” with “emotional?” It sounds like an oxymoron. But I’m dead serious.
Everyone has felt alone with a conundrum at some point, where it feels like no one in your life can relate. But what if there was a reporter who could find you the perfect stranger to talk to who gets it?
Zooming out, I also think we really need to examine the psychological, sociological, historical forces that shape why we feel what we feel and the emotional dynamics that drive our behavior. We’ve finally realized feelings are important, but I don’t think we’ve gotten much further than that as a culture. So that’s where Proxy comes in, with emotions as our beat.
What did you want to be when you were eight?
Pretty sure I wanted to be President, which is embarrassing.
How are you a different audio maker now than you were when you were making Invisibilia?
I’m a lot faster.
What was the hardest thing about starting a podcast from scratch, after working at NPR?
Besides the whole money problem, I’d say the daily emotional gymnastics of deluding myself into thinking “of course, Proxy will be a hit!”- just to find the motivation to do the work. I did a whole episode about it..
Oh and trying to figure out what a fucking pixel is for Chartable (RIP).
What has helped you the most?
Honestly? Getting on Lexapro.
What advice would you give to someone who left a major platform to go indie?
Once I realized my new beat was “how to make a successful podcast in today’s terrible podcast economy” - I felt less lost. Use your reporting skills.
What can we get excited about re: the new season?
Time to strap on my tap dance shoes. We got niche emotional conundrums for everyone, whatever your flavor! Family estrangement. Band drama. The career that got away. How to speak bro. I am so excited for people to hear these episodes. Get ready.
What’s your greatest goal for Proxy? An award? A big event? A theme park?
Honestly, I just want to keep making the show with this team for people who are into it. We’re having so much fun. So I guess, to keep having fun, no matter what happens?
What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
16th Minute of Fame
What’s a podcast you love that most people know about?
On the Media
Who is someone doing cool stuff in the audio space?
I call my friend Chioke I’anson the “New Mayor of Podcasting”. He runs the RESONATE podcast festival in Richmond, which is essentially a multi-day art installation with moments of beauty and ridiculousness popping off when you least expect it. It’slike a fireworks display that keeps going. Last year there was a surprise sound march to the after party, where there was a mermaid in the pool. Also, Chioke is obsessed with motorcycling?
Someone needs to do a profile on the man. In the meantime, I made him a magnet.
What’s something I didn’t ask you that you want to talk about?
I am SHOCKED you didn’t ask me about my music video where I pole dance in a kleenex box costume as a layoff grief ritual. I’m also shocked I didn’t get more press for The Layoff Trilogy series. I sent so many emails to reporters with the subject line: “This NPR host got laid off… and made a pole-dancing music video about it.” Come on. Wouldn’t you bite?
💎podcasts i texted to friends💎
👂Oh Phantom Power, sound professor and audio producer Mack Hagood talks to artists and scholars about sound. If you’re reading this newsletter I imagine you care very much about sound, and that browsing the archive will make you feel like you’re shopping the aisles during Guy's Grocery Games. There’s a “cassette theory mixtape,” where three scholars talk about consumer-focused magnetic tape and its history as a medium for the masses, one called “How Music Became an Instrument of War,” another one noise and affect theory with feminist sound scholar and musician Marie Thompson. The list goes on and on. On “Podcasting’s Obsession with Obsession,” Mack talks to Neil Vermam, who teaches radio, TV, and film at Northwestern, about the role narrative podcasts have played in American culture. It’s a mind-opening conversation about why the word “obsessed” comes up so often when we’re talking about podcasts (way more than TV and other kinds of media.) The answer isn’t as straight forward as you’d think. One of the reasons I found most fascinating was that when we’re listening to a podcast, we are usually obsessed with not the subject of the podcast, but the person talking about something they’re obsessed with, whether that be a journalist who spent years investigating a murder or Mack, a sound expert obsessed with sound. (It’s called mimetic desire, thank you very much.) This is truly an episode about obsession, its history and what it means to be obsessed with art. But also a close examination about why you are here in the first place, so obsessed with sound that you’re reading an entire newsletter about it. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Wish I knew for sure. I have been subscribed forever and have been religiously ignoring episodes but for some odd reason I tapped on one last week. (A former client of mine, Lowline’s Petra Barran, was on an episode so I believe I must have discovered it via some beautiful member of my team, Aakshi looking at you?)
👂An episode of 99% Invisible opens with a story about Arsenal striker Kai Havertz, a player Arsenal had bought for £60 million who had never scored a goal. When he finally made a penalty shot, the crowd erupted into a new and bespoke song for him, a remix of Shakira’s 2010 World Cup hit “Waka Waka,” singing: “sixty million down the drain, Kai Havertz scores again,” assuring critics that Havertz was not a waste of money. They sing this, now, every time he scores, which is part of a larger tradition of English football singing as a folk art form that shows off fans’ creativity and sense of humor. Every team has their own songbook. It’s stories like this that make me wish I could appreciate watching soccer, I really do. I am obsessed with the idea of these fans writing their own songs and all somehow knowing the words, like, instantaneously. (Thank social media.) It’s moving evidence that these fans are invested and feel like active participants in the games and the players’ success. (It reminded me a little bit of an episode of SAPIENS I wrote about earlier that talked about how spectators of Ballroom shows are active participants.) Listen here.
How I discovered it: Longtime listener but reader/subscriber Ade Sherling emailed me the MOMENT it dropped, before I saw it, to be sure I sent it to Justin. They both refer to themselves as “Gooners.”
👂Chelsea Devantez is one of those creators who just knows the kind of content people want and need, and knows exactly how to deliver it. She does that with all of her writing (on things from The Problem with Jon Stewart to Girls5Eva, and the entire community she has built around Glamorous Trash, the podcast formerly known as Celebrity Book Club. Her newest series is a recurring Viral Article Book Club, something I have been trying to convince my friends to do for such a long time. It’s much easier to get people to join a conversation about an juicy article than a book, and we are in the golden age of juicy articles. There are few things in media that gather us around the water cooler more than a piece about a personal-finance columnist got scammed out of $50,000. My mood perks every time I see one of these episodes. (And to mirror Chelsea’s “Bookdel Test” segment on the book episodes, there’s a “Click Lit” segment to the end of these.) There was a WILD episode about a WILD letter the Ethicist received, written by a white man wondering if prioritizing women of color in dating will advance his antiracism. Traci Thomas of The Stacks was the guest, (Chelsea and Traci are both in interracial relationships, Traci is a product of one) and what made this episode interesting upon interesting is that, just like the last time Traci was on this show, Chelsea and Traci do not agree on the subject at hand. They both write their own letters to the letter-writer. Another episode just came out about a Romantasy plagiarism scandal. Just l listen to all of them, obsessed with this mini-series, I want more more more. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Chelsea was on The Daily Zeitgeist a zillion years ago when she first launched the show and I have been listening since episode one.
👂For the 4-episode series Windows, Ivan d'Avoine and Derick Armah ask people to describe what they see when they look out their windows. The challenge was to create something using sonic imagery that is as evocative as the image you see from your eye. Looking out your window is traveling without going anywhere, it makes you remember things and you catch things flying by and going somewhere else. This simple challenge brings up memories and lofty thoughts alongside tiny, mundane observations. I could not not close my eyes listening. It’s very Strangers on a Bench, it finds surprising beauty and intimacy in the mundane and random things that surround us. We learn so much about these guests. It’s strange timing, I recently got a hand written letter in the mail from someone I love, someone who might be reading this, that details what she sees out her window and it felt like a very loving and private gift. Maybe sharing what’s outside your window is a special kind of communication. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Email from Ivan that didn’t feel like a press release.
👂I don’t know how this is possible but I completely missed out on the app Vine. I was in New York City working in media and was very online, it is so up my alley, and I didn’t yet have a very time-consuming job or a child so I definitely had time to waste on it. So when I hear Vine stories I snuggle up and get comfy, I love it. I love, how, for this brief period of time we had this relatively cool app that had restrictions for creatives that made content interesting and weird and kind of relatively democratic? It was also so frantic and unpolished, just like me!!! Anyway I’m enjoying Vine: Six Seconds that Changed the World, which documents Vine’s rise and fall and how it walked so TikTok could run, something…as I’ve said before…I do not have time for at this stage of my life but LOVE to hear about. This is a weird story and I don’t actually know why it was shut down so suddenly. (I WON’T Google it and don’t tell me. I want to be surprised.) But this podcast is taking us through the twists and turns. The trailer is very good, I recommend listening to that alone to hear how a good one is done. (“The answer to who got rid of Vine is going to make you a little mad…”) Listen here.
How I discovered it: Apple Podcasts feature.
👂I spend a lot of time in podcast Reddit and a lot of time talking to people about podcasts and by far the things I most see people professing their love for are Heavyweight and Reply All, but specifically the episode “The Case for the Missing Hit,” a piece about a guy who can’t find a pop song anywhere online. Alex Goldman, former host of Reply All and one of the guys responsible for “The Case of the Missing Hit” recently started a new show, Hyperfixed, and for a recent episode, Alex brought us another story about lost media that is an ode to Super Tech Support. (Oh! Please do not miss my favorite podcast about lost media, Everyone Knows That: The Search For Ulterior Motives.) This time we’ve lost a 2014 movie, Alex talks to Parker, a woman who has spent too much time looking for it. This is a conversation about why this happens and why this happens now. My brain was magnetized to the part of the story about the lack of marketing for a lot of the things we are making. Don’t get me started on this—so much content, so little good marketing! We should be surprised if we CAN find a piece of media we want. I also liked a small detail in this piece—Alex mentions that when searching for the movie he needs to score an interview with someone and to try to score that interview for Hyperfixed he mentions in the email that the show was on TIME’s best of 2024 podcast list. So that’s what the lists are good for!!! See? We need more podcast lists. Go start a podcast list. And listen to that Hyperfixed episode here.
How I discovered it: Longtime listener
👂The funniest episodes of If Books Could Kill are often about the most harmless books. Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri tackled one of them—Mel Robbins’ The Let Them Theory. As a podcast listener you might be used seeing The Mel Robbins Podcast topping all the charts, so getting the funny footnotes to her book might be especially interesting for you. Relatively speaking this book is not the worst, but it has a few problems that are common with so many of these If Books Could Kill selections—it’s an unnovel that could have been a TikTok and has limited utility that has been used to apply so broadly that it ends up being potentially sociopathic advice. (Your partner is cruel to you? Let them!) The book is silly and also has a few mini dramas in its history. (It’s a plagiarized idea.) Michael and Peter are just so funny along the way, they have amazing co-host energy and chemistry. At one point the book lists instances in which you could say “let them,” starting with the prompt “it’s not fair that…” and the list is long and swings wildly from things like “it’s not fair that your sister looks like a supermodel and guys flock to her at bars and not you” to “it’s not fair that your country is torn apart by war…” Comments Peter, “I don't know if know about this, child in Gaza, but some people’s sisters are way hotter than them.” Listen here.
How I discovered it: Discovered it via Michael Hobbes a long time ago.
👂What’s My Age Again, hosted by comedian Katherine Ryan, is a show that has guests expose their blood for a test that determines an accurate reflection of their biological age, as opposed to their chronological age. The press release made it sound like an advertisement for an unworthy and maybe made-up blood test. “I’m excited to be investigating cutting-edge technology that tests glycolic age with a mix of my celebrity friends. Are they biologically older or younger than they think they are? What can we all be doing differently to extend our lives?” But I’m 41 and I like to hear people being honest about aging. What’s My Age Again? Is making people get honest. I don’t want to know, or share with anyone, my biological age. I don’t feel old it’s just not a number I want to tie any feelings to. Breezy episode one, with guest Joanne McNally, flew by. (Joanne McNally, who you may recognize from such podcasts as My Therapist Ghosted Me and Who Killed Avril Lavigne?) Joanne is so funny and comfortable with herself, that is something nice to listen to. She and Katharine get into what it means to feel your age and what about their lives could contribute to a high or low biological one. Like how What We Spend lets us look inside people’s wallets, What’s My Age Again lets us look into people’s lives and habits. And plastic surgery histories! Katharine and Joanne admit the work they’ve had done, which could be a podcast alone. Not to spoil anything but Joanne’s test results were freakish. Listen here.
How I discovered it: Press release
👂You might be really sick of me writing about Disney (and Jesus) podcasts, but hear me out—even if A Window to the Magic isn’t your thing, it’s worthy of a write up because they are truly using the podcast format for good. Self-described “Disney Sounds Guy" Paul Barrie brings live recordings from Disney Theme Parks to our ears which solves a few of my biggest problems: 1) wishing I was in Disney World and 2) sadness for not being able to ride retired rides anymore. This is an audio time capsule, an audio memorial, a portal into the happiest places—specific rides, lands, holiday parades and festivals. But wait! There’s more please don’t stop reading, I know that’s been done. Paul has “Where in the Park” episodes, where he doesn’t tell you where the sound is coming from, and listeners who get it right can win a prize. It’s POV ride video for your ears, but better because, well, audio is better than video. (Paul also makes POV ride videos.) Listen here.
How I discovered it: I was searching for Windows, the show I wrote about above, in Pocket Casts and could not find it, this came up instead. (Ivan and Derick I hope you’re reading this.)
👂I love you!
ohhh excited to go listen to PROXY! I feel like it's going to be right up my alley.